 If anybody is watching, welcome everybody to the publicity team talk. Donald was going to make an introduction about what we do, we do, but since he's having issues with this audio. Laura, let me ask, so where are you? I live in Spain, I'm based in Spain. Okay, I live in Brazil, so how long years you are helping on publicity team? I don't remember very well, I started translating in 2010 or 2011, and then I started making translation for the website, and then started to be in contact with the publicity team too, first because of the translation of the Indian Project News and other things. And then in 2015, I think, I started to care about the web team, and that's all I think. Some years ago there were two teams, right, publicity and news, am I right? Yes, but that was not in my time, it was first, it was before. So it seems I came to the publicity team just when they were converging these two teams. So I know about it because I've read about it, but I didn't feel that they were two teams when I started participating. And now, I mean the name maybe sometimes is a little bit confusing because we say publicity, but for example we don't care about the merchandising. We care about spreading news about Debian for the wider audience and also inside the project. So there is an important thing to say in the name of the Debian project, we usually write that news, and when somebody in Debian does something that we think it's nice that everybody knows, we rely that news to the Debian channels. And sometimes we also talk with journalists to coordinate, for example, press releases, all with people from the public relations department of certain companies or organizations when we want to do a joint press release or something like that. So it is a little bit about, it's maybe more about press or publishing things that about marketing or merchandising or things like that. And on the other side, the Debian website is handled by the web team. So the publicity team initially only cares about the news section of the website. But in practice, for example, we also publish the release point announcements. And some people of the team, like Donna and me, are also members of the web team. So we have some kind of overlap there. And when there is something that affects, some change that affects the visual appearance of the project, for example, we want to change the icon on the website or things like that. We try to coordinate from the publicity team. And in our team, is there some publicity professional, like some journalist or something like that? Or everybody is just contributors that likes to write tests? Because this is what maybe someone is thinking that I need to be a journalist or I need to be a publicity to join the team. No, in fact, the team, most, I mean, the regular contributors of the teams is a very short team. It's a very small team. It's Donna, it's me and it's you and Jean-Pierre Giraud, sometimes another translator. But the content is done by us and no one of us have a journalist background or anything. We try to do the best that we can and we encourage. Also, we have English reviewers, people, native speakers that review the tests and help us a lot. I mean, it's not a very professional team. We would like to have people to create content more professionally. I mean, native speakers, native English speakers, also more translators for more languages. People creating artwork that sometimes we have very good help from some very young contributors who are also designers, but they are not regularly in the team. We try to ask them when we need something and most of the time they answer and they provide things. But it will be nice that somebody is inside the team to think in that way and to... So the content that we generate is more visual attractive and things like that. But I don't know. The thing is that the audience we have on the Particularities of the Vivian Project is so diverse and so big that we don't fit very well in the traditional marketing workflows or things like that. Also, because we are a volunteer project, I mean, I don't know how to say. Most of the people are Vivianites, people contributing in other things that also contribute something, try to contribute in the policy team. So this makes the team and the work a little bit difficult because we don't have too much workforce. And if I want to help but I can't write very well in English, is this a problem or someone can help me? For example, I can write a draft in English and someone else will review this test to publish it. I will explain my experience because I am not very proficient in English or I do the best I can. But I have learned a lot. Hello? Hi, can you hear me? Yes, don't ask. We cannot see you but we can hear you. I will finish this small thing and then I will let you. If you are open to other people writing your things a lot, you are very welcome to provide content even if it is not good English. If you write something and then other people come and rewrite it because of proofread or because the grammar or whatever or the way the text is written is not very clear. And you become upset because somebody is making, I am making many mistakes or somebody is making too many corrections. If this is a problem for you, well, maybe you can start in a part or something like that or try to read before other content that we have published to get the style or the things in the way that we usually do. But if for you it is not a problem that somebody comes and writes or corrects and things like that, it is perfectly fine. I have learned a lot reading the things that were already published. So for example, when I have to publish something, anything, I clone the repo, I clone the repo, I try to find an older news that was similar and start with that and then evolve it to the new content. So this way I try not to repeat the same mistakes that I make in English because the older news have already been proofread by the English native speakers. So this way, small, small steps, my English became a little bit better. And for us that we are not native, English native, so we can improve our English writing and after reading this correction that someone done in our tests, right? It's a good way to learn to improve our English. Yes, yes, yes. I think I will not speak anymore and let's give Donald some time. Hi Donald, are you there? I'm using three different computers, I'm running a microphone from one to the other. Live streaming is on. We have some echo now. Hi. Hello, what's the old school microphone? We are, we are having some echo. You still hear the echo? Yeah, let me see. Oh, it's okay now. Okay. So how are you? I'm well, how are you both? I'm fine. Good to see you. I heard some of the chat going on was very good. I was interviewed louder here. Yes. It became an interview. Enough. So Donald, where are you? Brooklyn, New York. Cool. Let me just plug in my headphones so we get less echo. Yes. I was reading the part mean way. No, no. I mean, I was reading the part where people are involved. Last year I met Donald here in Curitiba at DebConf 19. It was great to meet you personally. Laura, I don't know, I don't meet here her personally yet. Just for video and tests. Yes. Since we are in different continents, it's very hard. To find, for example, the time and motivation and money and whatever. To make a team sprint. Last year I went to the mini-deck conference in Marseille. Ah, yes. And I could meet Thomas Vincent and jump here. He wrote. I hope I saved his name. And we were talking about the team and how can people get more involved and so on. I also met Alban Bidal, who is caring about the merchandising part in the website. And sometimes he also contributes to the publicity team. But it's, I think we never had a whole team meeting. This is the first one. But also to one of the points that Laura is making, it is somewhat difficult to have meetings because we're spread across the world with so many different time zones. So, you know, we really rely a lot on IRC to kind of get things moving in any direction. It's overjoyed that the system. Yeah, very nice. So we have some topics that we wrote on the page, right? Some ideas for discussion. Okay. I went to Hamburg last year, some few weeks after the minute that become Marcel. So I was there, but Laura was not. I think two weeks, two weeks after Marcel. That was very nice. I am happy if people of the, any of the teams and the publicity team meet without me. I mean, I assume that sometimes it's difficult to have meetings because of timetables and things like that. And one of the things that I wrote in the past was that, what about maybe we could arrange some regular meetings in IRC to maybe not discuss just to come together and advance work. And I think, for example, in my case, I think that would help me to find the time and to sit down and to put my time on the publicity teams that I have pending. But on the other side, some people don't like this having a timetable or regular things and prefer to just contribute to baby and when they can. So I was a little bit reluctant to promote regular meetings of the team, but maybe we should. I don't know. I wanted to ask here and see what people think. Yeah, I think so. Did you think in some regularity like one per month or some days after, did you think in some regularity? I don't know. I think one puts one time at least one per month and maybe another or for just advanced things or I don't know. I really don't know because I am also my timetable is not regular and I don't know if I can attend myself. Yeah, I imagine. And other people were writing in the past how could we get relevant source to bring helpful info on the Deviant Communication Challenge. Well, I had one idea that is in my head since some time, but I don't know if it is a good idea or not. I have the idea of the Deviant ambassadors or I don't know the name in English when you send somebody to one country and they cover the news of that country and things like that. I think we could make a list of the teams or areas that people like. For example, I am in the outreach team already and I am in the web team already and I am in the Deviant diversity team already. Well, not just lurking there, but I am. I mean, if something happens in those areas, I know and I can write something or say something to the wider audience. But for example, I am not in Deviant User. I am not in Deviant Games, for example. I don't participate there. And I thought that maybe other publicity members is genuinely interested in Deviant Games and can be our ambassador there. And just have in mind that if something comes from that team, that is nice. I mean, write something for the publicity team. But I don't know because I don't know the areas where people are interested and also we are very few, so I don't know if we could cover it more. Or we should ask, make a big call, general to the project, to all the teams, all the teams member, please help the publicity team. Please write things for the Deviant blog instead of your personal, or in addition to your personal blogs. I mean, it's also, it's okay if people want to share in their blogs or in their social networks with their individual accounts. But what, what happened if some Deviant team wants to publish some tests, for example, about some new release or something about their teams? What can you do for the publicity team use this test? We usually, we are usually happy to review a draft for the, for example, for the Deviant blog. But I think they should start at least the initial draft. Because they know the details, we don't know. So, and we also don't like, for example, some people send mail to DeviantDevil announced about what is, about a team spring, for example, the people in the Perl team or the people in the, whatever, all the Deviant team. They send a report to the DeviantDevil announced. If they provide even the same text as a Deviant article, we publish it. But if they don't say anything, publish a micro news linking to the mail. Cool. If they provide a photo, we publish the article in the Deviant blog, including the photo. But if they don't say anything, I mean, it's difficult for us to go behind every Deviant team. Hey, you did a sprint. Come, bring the photo. We want to publish an article. I mean, maybe we can do it. Maybe we should do it. But I feel a little bit shy to go and push in that way. It is a bit difficult because we have to, am I echoing? No. It's okay. It is, the Deviant is large. I mean, it's very, very, it's larger than most people think. I think even for us inside of Deviant to realize how large the organization is. So it's hard for us really to kind of find every little bit of news to talk about. Sometimes we see things and we are aware of them and then we forget that everyone else is not always aware of them. So we really do rely on people saying that they've done an activity in Deviant or toward something and people absolutely publish it. Because I think, so the better solution for a team is starting to write some draft because they know better than us about what they are doing on this team, inside this team, right? Exactly. We can't follow everybody to know what is going on with all the teams in Deviant. Yes. And even they don't know to know, nobody needs to know the infrastructure that we used to publish. And for example, if you want to publish an article in the Deviant blog, in Beats Deviant.org, you can do in many ways. You can open a path, an asset path or a spamming storm, Deviant.net and write there and then we can turn it into a markdown and add it to the repo. Or you can clone the repo and commit yourself or add your file in the, I mean, it depends on how people like to work. We also, we just need more or less the initial draft, the title, the authors and the unexpected date to publish. But in the rest, I mean, the way that we elaborate the content or you elaborate the content is not important. You can use the one that you want and later we can translate it to the corresponding format in our Beats repo or the DPN or whatever. And I would say also on that same point when doing the drafts, if it's very or slightly technical that the authors should definitely include that information. We don't mind having to follow up, but sometimes it's a little outside of our purview. Myself, I don't program so some things can be a bit daunting for me to kind of read before it on. So it's always nice to have the ability to contact the person who initially wrote the draft so they can kind of make themselves available or maybe over expand in the article that they want to put forth. That would also be great and encouraging for us as well to get that news out. And Donald, what official channels we have on publicity team to publish about Debian? Can you tell us? We have the Micro News, which is like very, very quick, I don't want to say bits, but bits is something else also but very little quick bits of information that we need to get out very quickly. Bits we use as the official blog of the project, so that will be where you'll find like official information that comes forth with us. We have the DPN, the Debian Project News, which I have been the person responsible for the hold up on, but it's more so moved to an archival use. Because the other news outlets that we have are really pushing so forth, I'm sorry, pushing forth most of the news. So by the time people do read the DPN, the news is already two, three weeks old, which an internet time is pretty much like a year or so. Cool. Lauda, someone else? Would like to add? Yes, we also published some announcements in the website and also mailed them to Debian News. Which is the same mailing list where we send the Debian Project News, but these announcements are few. I mean, usually we left them for more traditional news. For example, we published the Debian Confer closing announcement summarizing what Debian Confer has been and so on. But this is also published in Beats Debian Org as a Beats article and also Micronews. We published the obituaries when we learned about somebody that passed by. Unfortunately, we like to express our condolences in some way. We want this kind of information to stay in the website for a long time, so we publish it as an announcement. And sometimes, for example, important donations or big partnerships between Debian and other organizations, we publish it as an announcement in the website. But most of the usual daily or normal news are published via Micronews when the source of information is in other places, for example, in some Debian mailing list or in some other website, or by an article in Beats Debian Org. But we also, I mean, if people follow Micronews or the Debian profile in any social network, they will get everything, because everything we publish in other channels, we also Micronews it. Cool. If someone writes a test in their blogs, someone that is not a Debian developer or Debian contributor, but just like to write about Debian in their blog, they can send a link for us to publish in Micronews, right? It's a good idea. It's a good idea, but we also make some creation. I mean, we don't publish everything. I mean, for example, we usually try not to publish, well, sometimes we publish news about Debian that are appearing in other sources, but we don't want to appear that for some certain media we publish and some other media we don't publish. So we prefer, I mean, the foreign sources, the third parties, we try to balance a little bit. We follow Planet, Planet Debian Org, so if your blog is there and we find interesting your article, we can, we will probably Micronews it. But other articles cause that maybe we feel that it's not for a wider audience or, I mean, we decide. Yeah, we just, we need to read before and think about that. It depends on many things. Sometimes we, there are things published also in websites that have included too much advertising there. And even also, we think that most of our readers have ad blockers and so on. We are a little bit reluctant to publish a link from a source who is very, I mean, too much advertising or things like that. This is an example, I mean. Yeah, sure. We can talk, we can talk about it. I think we need to do some creation. Is there a creation, right? Yeah, you're right. We certainly do, because we can't publish like everything and we do try to keep the focus really on things are happening in Debian and open source communities for the most part. But, you know, as Laura did say, sometimes someone will have like a small link or alert to something and, you know, if you follow the link that it's something else and something else and something else and it goes way off the point that we're trying to get out. And another thing I wanted to say that this can be one of the barriers. Is that most of our, the things that we publish are in English. So I understand that many people were bright in their own language or would write in their own language and it's writing in English is more difficult for them. So I'm afraid that some news don't don't appear too much because of that. But, well, we know in Debian, maybe you need a minimal level of English to participate in the community. So if somebody wants to to realize some news but is not sure about the English or cannot write in English, they can contact the language team and maybe find somebody to help them from the other translators. For example, if it is the case of Spanish, I can't help. But I don't know many other languages. So I think that we could try to coverage some Spanish language in French. Portuguese I trust on you. Maybe German, we can convince somebody to help in that case. And probably some more languages. I mean, we can think the website translators, for example, if somebody wants to say something and they can only write in their own language, they can, we can try to find a translator to translate, but then we publish in English and in the native language. I think following on that, I mean, we have demonstrated that we do publish in other languages. So I think if someone is more comfortable posting something or submitting something rather in their own language, if we can just verify the translation, we certainly can publish it in that language. It shouldn't be a barrier to anyone who wants to get information out. Well, certainly we do want to put forth as many things in English as possible. I don't think the language necessarily needs to be a barrier for getting information out. But again, that's going to depend on if we can get it translated. And about Debian Project News that we send by email. It's a little stop. I take full responsibility for that. Yeah. I really would like to get the news back up and running. It was very frequent, then not so frequent, then semi-frequent and now it's just kind of sitting. The last attempt I made at it was to just have it to stand as like an archival issue for the things that have happened so far in the year. But one of the things that kind of works against the VPN, I'm getting a lot of echo, I'm sorry, that works against the VPN is we have published most of that news already. So it makes it somewhat difficult to find sources that we can actually add into it. But also at the very bottom of it is a link to the articles that we've already published in the other sources. So the level of redundancy that's kind of built into it kind of makes it a bit more difficult to add data to it. I think that one of the problems that we have in Debian Project News is that for one person it's huge work. Because it's very big piece of text and to review to write and to review. And for them we split in some parts, but the people caring about each part are very far away and we have very different timetables. And then, for example, Jean-Pierre does the once upon a time Debian, the Debian, the sections about the packaging and Debian contributors and so on. I start doing the quick links, the micro news, the list of micro news and then I'll start to do the other part, the more writing parts. But we just don't engage the three of us. So when one of us put time, the other are not available so we cannot find the time to just finish and publish. It's difficult. So maybe we could try to be more serious with the deadlines and just put a deadline and try to do it. And if it is not done, publish what is done until that moment. I'm not sure, I don't know. I live also, this is mostly Donald's territory so I try to care about other things too. I'm certainly a fan of pushing something, like just getting something out for the sake of getting something out. The feedback on the Debian is always very good, people do enjoy reading it. At the last dev comp that I physically attended, I got a lot of feedback and people really loved reading it. And here I thought no one was reading it, but apparently a lot of people are reading it. Yes. But as we say, it's a little difficult getting the whole thing put together. We put together a giant issue I think two years ago, like the longest issue that we ever published. And I think for me personally, it just started my, like, slow, like, decline into doing it because there was a lot of work. And we can't get the entire team to contribute to it. It becomes very daunting. Another thing that they read on the part, Maddox wrote, what about some cases studies of how people use Debian on the main website? Well, maybe I can talk two or three minutes about the Debian website because I'm also webmaster. We have one section about users, Debian users in the website. If you go to www.debian.org slash users, you can find how people use Debian in organizations or companies or whatever. Government to public administrations, I guess. But this listing is a little bit old and we need to update it. I mean, we are receiving new entries all the time, but we also know suspect that some entries are old and they are not using, or well, they are not using anymore or the organization is not active anymore. So we should remove some entries from there. And this is some kind of work. I mean, somebody needs to care about that section and it's also huge work. Donna let me start with one audit in 2014, 2015. And we did as much as we could and then stopped because also the publicity work became more heavy on us. And then two years ago, we were thinking in the web team about removing all that section. I was feeling very sad about it. And I said, well, let's make a call if somebody can help and I can help them to get started in that section. And some volunteers came around, but I also couldn't find enough time to mentor them or to review their work. And now the situation is that some new entries are there. And we also have one new contributor that is looking for broken links in our website. So because of those broken links, probably some old entries will be removed. And maybe we could try somebody to make a new call and to renew that section. And when we have enough workforce people to care about that section, we can think about it putting, well, we are also thinking about renewing the home page of the website and maybe show there some, the new things that are coming to the website, like the new people using Debian and then not only the small things that we published, the release points and the obituaries and the big, big, big announcements, but also small news. I mean, to have some coordination between the things that we're publishing via the publicity team that also could appear in the Debian website home page. But we need workforce, we need people to be serious about something and to keep on working on it for some time. Because at the end, for example, I am mixing in the two teams and you can imagine that it's already big work. And I mean, we need more contributors. But I mean, but people wanting with their heart to stay here for some months, minimum or one year because it's not about doing something in two days or so. It's big work. I would also say on that kind of ask, publicity is one of the easiest ways into Debian so we value any contribution. It's a very easy way to get in to contributing back to something that you love. My entry into Debian was through the publicity team as well. So I have a big heart for it. Definitely come and join us. We'll definitely use you and appreciate you. I believe we'll have to finish it because we are in the time. I would like to encourage people to write about their experience about WConf 20 and send it to MikroNews. It's a good idea because we have a lot of people watching this WConf online and people can write about that and send to MikroNews. It's a good idea, right? If they write in their blogs, we can keep an eye and maybe do some special articles in bits, summarizing the different, linking to the different experience. Yes, it's a good idea. This is another possibility. Or we can try to finish the Debian project news policy this time next week and include some special about Debian for something like that. I don't know. Today I feel very motivated because it was really nice to see your faces and to talk. I hope the others too and the people watching too. And let's continue talking in our RSC channel and let's put hands on work. Cool. Okay, so I will say we will get the news out by... I don't have a calendar. Well, next weekend is the beginning of the new month, so maybe September 5th. It gives us some full seven days. Yeah, it's good. Okay. We broke it in PO. Nice. So everybody, I hope everybody enjoyed this WConf and come to the Debian Publicity RSC channel and let's continue talking. Bye. Bye everybody. See you. Bye.